


Release

by Aurumite



Series: Tumblr Prompts [25]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Multi, adultery warning (just in case but the chars involved are chill)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-12 21:42:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7950181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurumite/pseuds/Aurumite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aideen starts at the voice, scrambling back until she hits a tree trunk. A face peers at her from the window, a beautiful face, pale skin and hair and eyes showing in soft stripes through the bars. Her eyebrows are sloped in genuine concern. Aideen takes a shaky breath and stands.</p><p>“Who are you?”</p><p>“Deirdre,” the woman says, as if confiding. “Oh, Lady, why are you weeping? I heard it as I passed and it broke my heart.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Release

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this one for the “legend” prompt since Jugdral is pretty legendary in its own right (it’s where Owain gets all his most dramatic references, and for good reason). But for some reason I also kept thinking of that Sappho quote about being remembered in another time and another place. I feel like amidst all the dashing manly heroics and tragic ironies, a simple story about two women finding solace in each other would be easily forgotten—even though it might be exactly the story some people need to hear. 
> 
> Names from Jugdral are just a giant ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ so. I've come around to "Aideen" lately but changed my stance on "Jamka" to "Jamke" (probably bc I'm doing some very light studying of old english lately and it's rubbing off).

The cell is dark and muggy. Aideen sweats with her head against the stone and does not sleep nor eat the gruel and bread crusts they slide through the bars. Her wrists and thighs are bruised, her hair tangled. She doesn’t stir until Prince Jamke sits on his heels on the other side of the barrier, tells her it has been three days. His voice is soft. He says the castle’s walls are sturdy and the army’s guard is impenetrable, and the noble Lady Aideen can walk freely within them now. There is even a garden.

“Shall I show you the garden?”

Aideen wants to spit in the palm he offers, but in the end, she struggles to rise alone and must take it with her fingers. It’s calloused and its grip is hard.

* * *

 He leaves her alone and she is glad for it. The second he’s gone she dives into the ivy, heedless of the sweet birdsongs or the sun on her head. Her fingers pull back vines and pry at the stone of the walls until her nails are broken, her hands raw, her forearms covered with scratches. She throws her weight against anything crumbling until her shoulders are too bruised to continue, but the mortar still holds fast.

In a far corner of the garden, hidden from the battlements by thick-streaming willows and one massive, sprawling magnolia, she finds a little window. It’s filled with the same black iron bars her cell had. She pulls at them with all her might, but they do not budge.

Perhaps Jamke’s hands would have more luck. Her legs give out at the thought, and for the first time since her capture, Aideen weeps. The dirt stains her white skirts but is cool against her legs, almost soothing against the wet heat on her cheeks. The cicadas are whirring and a breeze stirs the willow branches but their susurrus isn’t enough to drown her out.

“What’s the matter?”

Aideen starts at the voice, scrambling back until she hits a tree trunk. A face peers at her from the window, a beautiful face, pale skin and hair and eyes showing in soft stripes through the bars. Her eyebrows are sloped in genuine concern. Aideen takes a shaky breath and stands.

“Who are you?”

“Deirdre,” the woman says, as if confiding. “Oh, Lady, why are you weeping? I heard it as I passed and it broke my heart.”

“I am Aideen of Jungby, in Grannvale. I was kidnapped by the princes of Verdane, and they are holding me here. I have no idea what will become of me.”

Deirdre’s eyes widen. “We must get you out.”

She bends to set something down and then white, long-fingered hands wrap around the bars. Aideen helps her push and pull until sweat runs down their faces and they both growl with the exertion, more animals than proper women, but nothing budges.

“I’ll check along the walls,” Deirdre says, and is gone before Aideen can tell her it’s no use. She presses her face to the bars and watches her until the ivy obscures her view, and then she glances at the woven market-basket Deirdre left at the foot of the wall. It’s filled with vegetables. She must have been on her way home, but from the ramparts Aideen had seen nothing but forest for miles outside the castle town.

Deirdre comes back perhaps an hour later. Her eyes are red and the fingers she curls around Aideen’s scabbed ones, still clutching the bars, are freshly bleeding.

“I’m so sorry,” Deirdre says.

“Thank you,” Aideen answers as a lump rises in her throat. She watches Deirdre pick up her basket and go.

* * *

Jamke asks, clumsily, if he can walk with her the next time she visits the garden.

 _No._ The word burns in her throat but she can’t make herself say it. If he is angry, if he clenches his large hands—

He bows slightly at her hesitance, and he leaves.

Aideen is drawn to the window that afternoon, if only to remember the kind face that had looked at her with such pity. For a moment she’d had an ally. She knows it is foolish, but it has filled her with hope. There are good people in Verdane.

Deirdre is waiting for her.

“I couldn’t stop thinking of you,” she says at Aideen’s shocked expression. “I know these are but little comforts, yet…”

In her market basket she has brought sweetmeats and a thick wooden comb engraved with a pattern Aideen has never seen before. She is crying again as Deirdre passes the gifts through the bars. She is a child, a wreck, as she devours candied walnuts and honey-soaked cakes, licking her fingers, but Deirdre speaks as if she can’t see: talking as idly as if they had met in the castle town’s marketplace, telling Aideen about how she travels to shop once a month, how she lives quietly in the forest with her grandmother.

By the time Aideen has picked up the comb and begun untangling her hair, she is trading stories in return: of her parents back in Jungby, her duties as a healer, the twin sister she lost when she was very young.

Every afternoon, Deirdre returns with something to cheer her: a ripe plum, a vine of honeysuckle, a handful of wildflowers from beyond the garden walls. They grip the stone windowsill and trade fairy tales. Aideen loves the old epics of gods and heroism; Deirdre swoons over every romance, no matter how overtold. They grip hands when the tales grow too exciting and they are overcome. And each evening as Deirdre leaves and Aideen must go inside, before anyone comes looking for her and discovers her secret, the sudden ache in her stomach tells her that she had, briefly, been happy.

* * *

The guards grow uneasier by the day. Aideen sees them shifting their weight as she passes.

Jamke stands with her on the battlements one day. She is letting the breeze cool her brow. He stares over the town and toward the horizon with grim eyes.

“What is it?” she asks him.

“Sigurd of Chalphy.”

She is not the true heir but something in her stirs then, Ulir’s blood singing swift and golden in her veins, and she knows that no matter what she says now, she can not be harmed.

“I am saved.”

Jamke looks at her then, and she freezes to see it’s the same expression Deirdre has made a dozen times, head tilted, eyes heavy-lidded, fingers warm against her own.

“Perhaps,” he says.

* * *

Aideen arrives late, that afternoon. Deirdre begins to worry before she sees her, stained skirts billowing like the drying petals of the magnolia tree that hides them from the castle’s view, yellow hair flying out behind her as she runs.

“What has happened?” Deirdre asks. She reaches through the bars as far as she can, up to the elbows, and Aideen clasps her arms.

“Lord Sigurd is coming to rescue me.”

“Lord Sigurd?”

Aideen speaks all afternoon to paint the picture of him: piercing blue eyes and hair dark as Baldur’s own, long-legged and broad across the chest. Unbested with a sword; a magnificent horseman. Gallant, decisive, passionate as any man should be, but more sincere in his fervor than romantic Eltshan of Augustria and his quiet eyes, kinder than daring Cuan of North Thracia and his arrogant smile. Her dear friend since childhood.

“Oh,” Deirdre breathes; it’s all she can manage. She’s starved for more. Aideen recounts their adventures as little ones playing chase in the corridors, the times he held her hand when she wept for Brigid, how she would heal his bruises for him after training. Sometimes his sister Ethlyn joined them, and they were a flurry of affectionate teasing Aideen had never seen elsewhere.

“The princes of Verdane stand no chance,” Deirdre said at the end, “if what you say of him is true.”

“All of Sigurd is nothing but true. He’ll storm this castle with a horse tied to his own, hand me the reins, and I shall ride hard and never look back.”

This is good news—the best of news. But something twinges in Deirdre, even as she sighs and smiles and leans her brow against the bars.

“And then you’ll marry him, when you are safe in Jungby?”

Aideen laughs. She looks startled. Deirdre feels startled, too.

“Marry him? You know...I’ve never once thought about it.”

“But you love him,” Deirdre urges, and though Aideen’s fair face turns bright red, her smile is honest.

“As a brother, I do. You’ve felt the difference, haven’t you? With as lovely as you are, surely you have a sweetheart of your own?”

Deirdre feels her own cheeks heat up. “I can not. It’s forbidden.”

She must explain it then, though she knows little: how her people guard ancient magics and secrets, the prophecy no one will explain to her in full. She must never consort with a man. She should never even talk to one, outside the elder at the vegetable stand, in case she is tempted to touch him, to move against him. To love him would be worst of all.

“It seems unfair,” says Aideen, but Deirdre shakes her head.

“It’s our tradition. I’d like to uphold it.”

And she knows it’s a lie, knows she’s already bared her heart to Aideen, her longing for a partner to arrive like a white knight in a storybook and take her away from the dark forest, into the light. Aideen knows it too. For the first time it is she who looks through the barred window with concern, she who reaches to stroke Deirdre’s face.

“Tell me where to find you?” Aideen asks. “Will I be able to send you letters? After Sigurd comes, will I see you again?”

Deirdre opens her mouth, but the voice that cuts through the quiet garden is deep and firm and not her own:

“Lady Aideen? Lady Aideen!”

“Go,” Aideen hisses. “Go!”

And Deirdre flees back to the forest.

* * *

The next day, Aideen is not there. Deirdre waits at the window from noon until sundown.

The rescue was much quieter than she had imagined. No fighting or shouting or ringing of steel, no horses neighing and galloping. She has not seen Grannvale colours flying from the castle spires.

She sits against the ivy-covered stone wall and she weeps for joy. Aideen will see her friends again, the ones she’d spoken so fondly of, and return to her beloved home. She will be safe and her hands will grow soft again. And when that day comes Sigurd will kiss her; he’ll pull her so close nothing will fit between them, and he’ll bury his strong hands in her beautiful yellow hair, and when he pulls away she will smile as she always does, soft and shy.

When evening has fully fallen, Deirdre stands and walks back to her village. She is once again the only person her own age that she knows.

And this time, from the other side of the window, she is the one who envies Aideen her freedom.

* * *

Jamke leaves Aideen within reach of Sigurd’s army a little past dawn, and parts with a kiss to her knuckles and a promise to bring peace. It’s the latter that finally breaks through the walls she’d bricked around herself, the bars she’d tried to seal him behind, and she watches his broad back as he leaves.

Sigurd grips her hands tight and searches her face, begs her to tell him every grief she endured so that he might avenge her a hundredfold.

“I’m all right,” she assures, to him and then Ethlyn and then so many friendly faces she hadn’t expected to see: sweet Azel, and Lex, and Midayle so whole and alive that she nearly sinks to her knees. “Prince Jamke was kind to me. He let me walk in the gardens, and spoke with me, and it was he who set me free.”

Something stops her from mentioning Deirdre, though she doesn’t know what. Something about the stubbornness in Sigurd’s eyes, some memory of how the wind stirred when that beautiful fairy-woman mentioned prophecy. Perhaps most of all, it’s that they’ll find her weak and foolish if she admits that without the simple comforts of fairy tales and flowers passed through a barred window, there might have been nothing left for Jamke to save.

After all, he betrayed his brothers for her, his fathers, his entire country. How ungrateful was she, if she valued moments of sunlight upon silver hair above such courageous selflessness? Such obvious love for her?

* * *

One night Sigurd doesn’t return.

Cuan comes back with tears in his dark lashes and says they’ve quarreled. Aideen stays up and worries with him and Ethlyn until daybreak: until dew sparkles on the grass and Sigurd returns upon his white horse like a sun-god, a beautiful woman seated between his arms.

“This is Deirdre,” he says as he helps her dismount, and his voice is deeper than it was a day ago, and his hands are easy on her waist. “My beloved.”

She looks shy at all the new faces, Ethlyn’s awe and Cuan’s incredulity. Aideen throws herself from the crowd and her arms around Deirdre’s neck, and Deirdre squeaks in surprise and hugs her back so tightly she can’t breathe.

“You two have met?” Sigurd asks, bewildered, but for a long moment neither answers, just breathing _I’m so glad_ into the other’s hair. Deirdre is the one to pull away first. She reaches for Sigurd almost unconsciously. And she tells him the story in full detail, each little moment they shared through the hole in the wall. Though their friends listen raptly, the story is forgotten by sundown, carried away by her romance with Sigurd like leaves in a stream. How he found her bathing in the moonlight and swept her into his arms and at the sight of his face she forgot she was naked. How he liberated her from her oppressive village and their ignorant superstitions; gave her the freedom to live and love. How he received her grandmother’s blessing, and how Deirdre concocted a plan to overcome the enemy with her ancient magics. Together, they would right Verdane, restore Aideen, and then return to Chalphy and marry.

It’s only right, Aideen thinks. It’s exactly the way it should be. But something about it makes her chest tighten nonetheless.

* * *

“I hate when he leaves without me.”

“It’s just a sally,” Aideen tries to soothe, but Deirdre is inconsolable when Sigurd is gone. She paces by the window in the afternoon light, tears on her soft cheeks. She insists over and over that something bad will happen. Aideen knows it as a kind of madness, the anxiety that digs in deep like the teeth of a rabid animal, that clutches and doesn’t let go. It isn’t something she can heal with any staff. She just rises from the couch and folds Deirdre in her arms and strokes her hair until she has no tears left.

“Oh Aideen,” she sighs then. “You’re so wonderful. So compassionate.”

The warmth on her face seems like it is from more than the sunlight. Aideen kisses the top of Deirdre’s head.

“You know, I’ve always thought the same of you.”

* * *

Jamke returns with an army, and by noon is an ally.

The story ripples through camp: how he was plagued with nightmares of killing the woman he’d fallen for, how his arrow grazed her cheek and she simply stared him down as blood dripped to her jaw, for she owed him nothing despite what he’d risked for her. How a proud, noble prince cast his bow away and knelt before her to beg her forgiveness like a wretched pauper. How she gave it without hesitation.

When the war is over, Sigurd and Deirdre are married at once, even before the army can return to Grannvale. It is a splendid occasion. Aideen helped make the wedding dress, embroidering unfurling flowers at the hem while Ethlyn stitched in gems and coloured glass. Deirdre looks more fey than ever in it, and Aideen spends most of the night thinking about her little waist and delicate wrists, what it would be like to take the pins from her hair and watch it tumble down.

That night, Jamke—brotherless, fatherless, traitor and ruler—he presses his lips very gently to the faint scar on her cheekbone, and he gives her a golden ring thickly set with emeralds. He tells her that restoring Verdane will take years, but that he will never look at another. He asks if she will wait for him.

She could hardly do better, she knows. Jamke is a king now. He speaks quietly, touches softly. He is rash, perhaps, but his convictions are strong. He is handsome to look at.

It takes his almost-proposal to make her realize that what she really wants is the woman in the window. But that woman is married now, and Jamke is the one left who had tried to bolster her, to save her from life’s loneliness.

It would be easy to do the same. She slides the ring onto her finger and she tells him she will consider it.

* * *

But war begins again.

This time it’s Augustria, to the north. Deirdre begs Sigurd to take her with him, and he obliges—for three months, until she begins vomiting her breakfast back up each morning. Aideen is at a loss for a cure. Sigurd frets that it’s a terrible illness. Ethlyn is the only one who knows enough to tell them that Deirdre is with child.

 _With child._ Aideen feels numb as she volunteers to escort Deirdre back to the safety of Evans Castle. Deirdre weeps the entire time: half in sorrow as she looks over her shoulder at Sigurd, half in wonder as she wraps her arms around her middle.

When they arrive, night has fallen. Aideen helps Deirdre dismount though she no longer needs the aid, and holds her hand for support all the way to the room she shares with Sigurd. But the torches are unlit and the bed is empty, and Deirdre grips her hand hard.

“I am not supposed to be with child,” she whispers.

Her hair is obscuring her face. Aideen reaches with her free hand to tuck it behind her ear.

“You’re a holy woman,” Deirdre says.

Aideen doesn’t understand the grief on her brow. She edges humbly, “I live to serve, as well as I can. That is all.”

“If I tell you something—something horrible—will you hate me?”

There’s no more hair to brush back but Aideen keeps making the motion, soothing. “I could never.”

Deirdre stares into the darkness of her room. “I carry Lopt blood. That’s why they hid me in the forest. The Cult is after me because they want to resurrect Him...but Sigurd promised our love was stronger. He promised he would protect me. Me and any child I might pass this curse on to. I have been selfish, Aideen.”

Aideen has seen the powers of the gods, of healing, of science. Love is not a power she has ever put stock in. But Deirdre is frightened, and anything but selfish, so she holds her close.

“Love is your right,” she murmurs. “Let’s ready you for bed. I will stay with you.”

* * *

Throughout Deirdre’s pregnancy, Aideen lives in her room. During the night she keeps her warm, arm wrapped around her growing belly, and during the day they return to old habits: eating dried fruit and candied nuts (Deirdre craves sweet things at every hour), and trading legends and fairy tales.

There is a soft white couch by the hearth, and that is where they usually sit, with enough space between them for a third to join (though Sigurd still rides in Augustria, and Ethlyn still heals at his side, and Jamke has left Verdane with his forces to aid them, so the space for their ghosts goes unused). But this time, after the story of a princess who followed the spectre of death until she could outwit him and steal the life of her lover back, Deirdre reaches across the couch and covers Aideen’s hand with her own. She twists the emerald ring.

“Do you miss King Jamke very much?” she asks softly, and doesn’t lift her eyes. “Sigurd and I have married and had beautiful months together, but you’ve hardly seen King Jamke since he took the throne.”

“He has his duties, and I have mine.”

“But he’s your betrothed.”

“Not exactly.” Aideen tilts her head, wondering how to phrase it. “It was an offer, not a promise. Just a way to remember him. He said that if I change my mind at any time, I can give the ring back.”

“Still...you must be lonely?”

She must be, still so far from home, without her twin sister, without the man who loves her.

But she isn’t.

“I am never lonely with you,” she says.

It sounds too bold, too forward, and she blushes but she can’t take the words back. They’re the truth. Deirdre doesn’t lift her eyes. Her fingertips follow the fine tendons of Aideen’s hands, brushing the skin up to the bend of her wrist.

“Do you remember what you told me, once?” Deirdre murmurs. “That you love Sigurd as a brother? That love comes in many forms?”

“Yes, but—what do you mean?” She’s suddenly dizzy as Deirdre’s fingers slip under her sleeve and ghost up her arm.

“If you did not tell me about my lord husband’s character, I would have run from him the night we met. I owe everything to you, Aideen.”

“You owe me nothing.” Her voice comes out half-choked. “If anything—I was the one trapped—they hurt me, and you came _every day_ to comfort me—”

“I hope I comfort you even now,” Deirdre says, pale eyes shining, “as you do me.”

And then their lips are together, feverish, warm, clutching at arms and shoulders and faces and the fronts of their dresses before Deirdre finally anchors her hands in Aideen’s hair. They moan as one, their breath catches as one in surprise and in delight at the sound. Together they sink down to the pillows. Aideen marvels at how true freedom is something that is surrendered to.

* * *

When Deirdre’s time draws near, they send for Sigurd.

She is achingly beautiful like this: round as the moon, always flushed and glowing even despite her sore back and restless nights. Aideen has spent every afternoon with Deirdre’s skirts pulled up to just beneath her swollen breasts, running a hand along her stomach and feeling the child stir.

Sigurd returns in time, having left Prince Cuan in charge of his forces. Deirdre has a few days to spend with him, and Aideen, suddenly too guilty to meet her old friend’s eyes, busies herself with helping to manage Evans Castle’s affairs. They do not speak for two days, three—too long.

And then, on the evening of the third, Sigurd catches her in the kitchens with flour on her hands, and leans on his arm in the doorway.

“Aideen,” he says softly. The tone of his voice means Deirdre has told him everything, or perhaps he’s read it in his wife’s mind, for at times they seem one inseparable being.

“Lord Sigurd,” she answers to the counter’s surface. “I’m so sorry… This was without forethought, I swear; she was just so frightened—”

“Aideen.” He cuts her off and comes a little closer. Her face is blazing hot but she raises her eyes and realizes with no little surprise that he’s blushing, too.

“Aideen, I’ve come to thank you. I don’t…” He struggles. Her mouth falls open and she waits. “I don’t want Deirdre to be alone, ever. She was alone her entire life. If I can’t be there for her, then...it’s bitter, perhaps, but in the end I’m glad, truly, that you can be. We both know you well. We both trust you.”

“Oh…” She is blushing so hard that it stings, and all that keeps her from covering her face is knowing she’ll get flour all over it. Something escapes her, halfway between a sob and a laugh. “Oh, this is so embarrassing…”

Sigurd makes the same sound. “It is, isn’t it. To think, I’ve been cuckolded by a nun.”

But he’s smiling, genuine if nervous, and she returns the gesture. She feels for awkwardness between them, resentment, but finds nothing. They love his wife. They love those whom his wife loves; almost sister and brother again.

A shrill summons from a maid breaks their gaze, as she appears breathless in the doorway: “The lady Deirdre’s time has come!”

They run for the staircase at once. All of Aideen’s baking things lay scattered for hours.

* * *

Sigurd spends a fortnight doting on his exhausted but overjoyed wife and his healthy, newborn son before he must go to rejoin his troops. He leaves them with tender kisses and a promise to return safely.

When they’re all reunited as a family again, there will be little place for Aideen, but seeing Deirdre’s beatific smile at her husband’s promises makes it worth it.

For now she sits with little Shanan on the couch, helping him light Seliph’s head as he holds him.

“He looks just like Sir Sigurd,” Shanan says, delighted. Everyone says that. Everyone has agreed he’s the spitting image of his father: the dark hair and deep blue eyes, the strong cry, the strength in his little hands.

Aideen can only see Deirdre. Seliph’s eyes are blue, yes, but large and luminous and curious. He sprouts cowlicks in all directions and will have something like a lion’s mane when he’s older. Though everyone insists he’ll grow into Sigurd’s sharp jaw with manhood, the delicate curve of his chin makes Aideen suspects otherwise.

He coos for Shanan and Aideen traces his cheek with a knuckle. There’s no darkness in this boy, as Deirdre had feared. He’s perfect.

* * *

News arrives that Sigurd has taken Madino Castle, finally earning a foothold in Augustria.

They’d agreed that Deirdre should remain home with Seliph, but his position is perilous and the castle is not far. She leaves to find him, in such a rush that she doesn’t say goodbye.

The legends say that she was captured by the Dark Cult, that her memories were erased, that she was wedded to the brother she never knew she had, that she was slain by the son she bore with him: the son overflowing with Lopt blood. They speak of Sigurd’s grief, the way he screamed for her when he returned to find her gone. They speak of how he never so much as looked at another woman until the day of his death, and how tightly he held his son, terrified to lose him, too. They speak of how he went mad the moment he found her again, his horror soon drowned in the roar of an inferno.

There is no legend of the hours Aideen spent weeping in the dark, curled around no one, wondering what prison poor Deirdre had found herself in this time, praying it wasn’t windowless.

For all the talk of her being a holy woman, nothing answered to comfort her.

* * *

She survives King Alvis’s attack, if only barely. The stories don’t mention her burn scars, either.

Jamke acts like he can not see them, but it is no longer enough. Love comes in many forms, but some are worth more than others. Aideen removes the ring from her finger, returns it to him, and follows Oifey and Shanan to Isaach, carrying Seliph close to her breast.

There is an abbey there. She prays. She lights candles. She heals the children’s scrapes and teaches them their letters. She listens to their troubles. She tells Seliph about his noble father—she is very good at that.

* * *

But one evening he asks for more.

She had no duties on the day of rest, and had come to Shanan's for dinner. Seliph stays long after the others have gone and helps her clear the table.

“Lady Aideen,” he says carefully. His seventh birthday passed a fortnight ago but he's still wearing the scarf she'd knit for him. “Did you know my ma, too?”

She can only give him small details, for fear of overwhelming him: the lullabies Deirdre would sing to him, the colour of her hair and the perfume she would wear, how very much she loved him. She must keep the rest to herself, and bites her tongue before her longing escapes, before the memories drift too close.

She misses her voice, her hair and perfume, the motherly look in her eyes. She misses the taste of her. She wonders if King Alvis tells her stories before bed and then winces against the bite of shame, knowing she should wonder nothing of the man other than whether he is dead.

“Lady Aideen?” Seliph asks. He's always been an observant boy.

She smooths his hair back and kisses his brow.

“Your mother would be so proud of you,” she says, and that seems to be enough for Seliph. He grins at her—something all his own—and scampers off to play with the others.

* * *

The news of Deirdre's death comes and goes. Aideen expects it will leave her in the darkness again, cheek on the floor like it's the beginning all over again, but instead it washes over her. Alive or no, the real Deirdre has been gone for a long time. She has accepted it by now.

Seliph grows to manhood, and as she once predicted, his jaw is soft and his eyelashes are long and his hair is too thick to be his father’s. He’s raised his army and the time has come to fight. Before he leaves, he finds her in the abby and takes her hands.

“You're the closest thing I've ever had to a mother,” he tells her. His eyes are full of feeling and Aideen's are full of tears. That, too, goes unsaid in legends.

When he is gone, he and Oifey and Shanan and all her almost-children, there is nothing left for her to do. She crawls into bed and feels the sunlight from the window on her closed eyelids, smells wildflowers far in the distance. She does not get up again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Had a lot of fun with hands :0. 
> 
> This ended up way longer than expected and I'm still not satisfied with the pacing, but it's already late so I wanted to get it posted. Concrit would be appreciated if you have any!


End file.
